Punishment Box

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Carr: These here spoons, you keep with ya. Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box. No one will sit in the bunks with dirty pants on. Any man with dirty pants on sittin' on the bunks spends a night in the box. Any man loud-talkin' spends a night in the box. You got questions, you come to me. I'm Carr, the floor-walker. I'm responsible for order in here. Any man don't keep order spends a night in —

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Our protagonist is in a Chain Gang prison and has violated one of the Corrupt Hick sheriff's rules. So they send him to the Punishment Box (more commonly, "The Box.") The Box is a small metal shed in the middle of the compound, exposed to sun. They put you in and you are tortured by sweating it out in 120-plus degree heat, basically frying you alive. Unless it's a cold night, in which case you have to keep from freezing to death.

Although the box could be made of cardboard, especially in comedic examples, this is not to be confused with Cardboard Prison. See also Iron Maiden, which is even less beneficial to your health.

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Examples:

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Anime And Manga

In Axis Powers Hetalia, a particular incident similar to this is Played for Laughs. A strip shows Sealand ignoring his "Papa" Sweden and watching TV. Sweden gets a big cardboard box, writes "England" on it, and then sneaks up behind Sealand, and throws the box over him and shakes it with him inside, calling it a "Dambolis" with Sealand saying "Please stop it!". It's even funnier because the strip is presented as a step-by-step of how to make a Dambolis (it will take 3 minutes, it claims).

In Kill la Kill, Gamagoori briefly mentions that Honnouji Academy has a "time out chamber" which students can be sent to for months at a time. This being Honnouji, it's not surprising.

Film - Animated

In Chicken Run, Ginger is put on a coal bin every time she's caught trying to escape. Like many other scenes in the film, this is an homage to The Great Escape.

The classic prison expose film Hell's Highway (1932) features a sweatbox in which prisoners are held erect by a metal collar. Early in the film, one prisoner passes out inside and is strangled, leading to a mess-hall riot.

In The Great Escape, it was The Cooler and it was reserved for attempted escapees. The fact that Steve McQueen's character had been in it so many times, and had survived, led to him being termed The Cooler King. His bouncing a baseball around the Cooler has become a Stock Shout-Out.

In Hook, pirates who have failed are put into the "Boo Box", a chest which is also inhabited by several scorpions.

In Matilda, the sadistic headmistress is fond of (among other things) using the "Chokey," a closet lined with massive spikes and blades, thus like an iron maiden in which there is just barely enough room to stand.

The Japanese prison camp in The Bridge on the River Kwai has a metal punishment box that stands outside in the sun. Prisoners don't get any water.

The hot box used in Django Unchained on the plantation owned by the sadistic Calvin Candie. It's a metal enclosure in the ground exposed to the humid Southern heat, which was used on Django's wife Broomhilda as punishment for trying to escape Candyland.

Also called the hot box in the 2005 remake of The Longest Yard. It's basically a tiny shack where prisoners bake in the desert heat for days at a time — and sometimes the guards "accidentally" forget to give them food and water.

Discussed in Shock Corridor, where the hero is threatened by the warden to receive this treatment.

In the Ozploitation movie Turkey Shoot the main protagonist is put in a cage out in the sun where he's forced to hold up a heavy weight.

In Life prisoners are punished with time in "The Hole," which is an outhouse sized shed with no light or plumbing out in the sun in the South.

Parodied in Muppets Most Wanted where Tina Fey's character opens the slot of one during a musical number, and the guy inside sings.

In Escape Plan, The Tomb is home to one of the most punishing examples of solitary confinement. Prisoners in solitary are kept in a small enclosed space thats probably no wider than a casket, with barely enough room to stand up, and a set of powerful halogen lamps that shine bright intense light and heat on them like a reptile in a terrarium, while the lights go on and off after an amount of time. These lamps are a torture instrument designed to inflict sensory overload (bright lights, intense heat, loud buzzing of the lamps), sleep deprivation, and accelerated dehydration on a prisoner, essentially weakening them without laying a hand on them, or cooking the belligerent prisoners in an oven.

Black Mama, White Mama: Lee (played by Pam Grier) and her fellow prisoner Karen get into a fight during a meal and are punished by being put in a sweatbox barely big enough to hold both of them. For some reason they are both stripped to the waist and they struggle to avoid touching the hot metal with their bare skin.

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In The Talisman, during the part of the book that takes place in the Sunlight Gardener Home, rulebreakers are sometimes locked in a refrigerator-shaped container simply called "The Box".

In Captive of Gor, Elinor is locked into a slave box for eighteen days to break her spirit after repeated minor offenses.

In Soul Music, DEATH joins the Klatchian Foreign Legion - "to forget". legionnaire Beau Nidle gets The Pit, the Foreign Legion's version of The Box. And still remembers everything.

Live Action TV

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Paradise", a group of colonists who crash-landed on a planet 10 years ago use the Box as punishment for any transgression. Like stealing a candle.

Kung Fu: Caine finds himself in a two-man Box, and teaches the other man in the box to meditate so as to avoid the torturous aspects of being in the box. The guards & other prisoners are amazed that they're able to leave under their own power instead of being carried out.

The Incredible Hulk episode "The Slam:" David gets put in one. Strangely enough, he doesn't Hulk Out. Another prisoner in the box next door tells him how to survive: find a rock to suck on, put your head in the least exposed place possible, and don't move around.

My Name Is Earl: Earl goes to prison to cover up the fact that Joy really did the crime in question. The prison there has a 2 person "Hot Box;" there's a chain link fence between the two sides of the box, but there's also a hole in the fence big enough to put your arm through.

In the Firefly episode "Jaynestown", Jayne's former partner is kept prisoner in solitary confinement, in a small (looks to be maybe 5 foot by 5 foot) box on stilts in the middle of a swamp. It's said he was held there for four freaking years. It's a wonder he could stand and walk as nobody could survive a hot box for that long.

The X-Files episode "Trevor" starts with a guy being punished by going into a small shed. The kicker, this was before a major tornado was about to hit. Of course, not only the guy survives, he somehow becomes an Intangible Man and murders the warden who put him in the shed.

The heroes are subjected to this punishment in The Time Tunnel episode "Devil's Island" when they arrive on the eponymous French Penal Colony and are mistaken for prisoners.

In Seven Days, Frank's background includes several days in such a box while being a captive (a form of interrogation). He never cracked that way, but the project recovered him from a madhouse.

Hornblower, "The Duchess and the Devil": Midshipman Archie Kennedy tells Horatio that when he attempted to escape from Spanish prison, he was put in a small hole in the ground covered by a grate. The oubliette had neither room to stand upright or lie down, and he couldn't walk for a month after the punishment. The exposition was a Chekhov's Gun, as Horatio was held there too, facing rain, cold, hot sun and rats.

In the The A-Team episode "Bad Time on the Border", Hannibal Smith is kept for some time in a box of corrugated scrap metal in the heat as the sun rises higher (the villain taunts him that it's not even noon yet). While it doesn't kill him (or even stop him from making with the wisecracks), it's heavily implied that it would have killed him eventually had the bad guys not decided to dump him off the back of the truck instead.

Profit. It's the central object at the heart of the show. More specifically, it's a box emblazoned with the Gracen & Gracen logo. As a child, Jim Profit practically lived in it thanks to his abusive parents. A television set, visible from a small hole cut in the box, was his only way of learning about the outside world. Even as an adult, he still has that box...

In Orange Is the New Black, SHU is depicted as such. Both times Piper is put in the SHU, she's depicted as desperate and even slightly crazy from the isolation. As if that's not enough, the food is even more disgusting and inedible than the usual prison fare.

In "The One with...Chandler In a Box" from Friends, after Chandler kisses Joey's girlfriend behind his back and says he'd do anything to get Joey to forgive him, Joey concocts a punishment of putting Chandler in a large boxnote As Joey mentions in the episode, this is a call back to when Joey willingly locked himself inside their entertainment center, which allowed the roommates to be robbed of just about everything they owned.. Chandler then spends Thanksgiving dinner inside the box (and Matthew Perry really did stay inside the box for his scenes).

Rachel: So now, what exactly is the point of the box?

Joey: Chandler?

Chandler (counting on his fingers through a small hole in the top): The meaning of the box is threefold: One, it gives me the time to think about what I did; two, it proves how much I care about my friendship with Joey; and three...it hurts!

Life: During a college professor's annual "study" recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment, a small box is used for putting "prisoners" in solitary confinement, though the heat/cold portion of the torture is skipped.

Mad did it again in a "Monroe" comic where Monroe goes to summer camp. A counseler tells him to behave or they'll put him in "the box." The other counseler tells Monroe not to worry, he's just kidding; the state doesn't let them use "the box" anymore.

Newspaper Comics

In Dilbert, the Pointy-Haired Boss once threatened to put Dilbert in "the Box" if he didn't work harder. Dilbert asked if "the Box" was bigger than his cubicle.

Crock has two never-seen prisoners who talk to each other from adjacent metal boxes.

Podcasts

In Welcome to Night Vale, Cecil expresses fear, or maybe just mild annoyance, about the possibility of having to attend "another HR re-training session in the dark box."

Video Games

Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri has the "punishment sphere", which make the oppressed masses too frightened to ever riot no matter what. For some reason, constructing this city improvement is not on the list of atrocities that will turn the other civilizations against you.

Paladin Rychek: There are three simple rules to follow with Brotherhood equipment: If you damage your weapon, you will spend a week in the box. If you damage your armor, you will spend a week in the box. If you lose either, I'll kill you myself.

Camp Whispering Rock in Psychonauts has some old "geodesic psycho-isolation chambers" that used to be used as punishment for troublesome kids.

In Fallout 3, the slaver town of Paradise Falls has a converted personal fallout shelter appropriately called The Box.

Found during the first Prague level in Sly 2: Band of Thieves, set in a prison. One of the first objectives of the level is Bentley rescuing Sly from the box after he and Murray were betrayed by Neyla in the last level. Sly got thrown in there for fighting, giving Bentley the best opportunity to bust him out by launching a train at the prison.

Randal's Monday: Randal is put in one during the prison chapter. Randal is hurried to find a way to escape, because due to the time loops it's pretty much a And I Must Scream fate for all of eternity, as he points out.

King of the Hill: Bobby is put into one of these at a military school when his grandfather Cotton takes over in an attempt to make him a man. It most assuredly does not break him. As Hank points out, you can keep pounding at something soft, but it'll never make it harder or break it.

In an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, an amnesiac Bruce Wayne becomes a captive of a forced labour camp made up of homeless people owned by a Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit. The main punishment for failure to work is being placed in a corrugated iron box in the hot sun. Being Batman, he regains his memory and breaks out.

In TaleSpin, Baloo stays at a Thembrian penal colony which he has mistaken for a fitness camp. He is frequently sent to what he calls a "solar powered sauna."

In the "Boiling Rock" episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the titular prison has "The Cooler," a small refrigerated cell designed to contain fire benders. Plays the trope straight in that it's a small, confined box they're put in as punishment, and inverts the effect in that it's a punishment because it's freezing rather than hot.

One episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast has Space Ghost telling Zorak to do what he says, or he'll go to The Box. Zorak frightfully whispers "The Box?" before complying with Space Ghost's orders. Notable because Zorak is usually impossible to intimidate.

I Am Weasel: In episode "I Stand Corrected", Weasel and Baboon are sent to a correctional institute that utilizes one of those boxes. Jailkeeper Red Guy doesn't seem to understand how they work considering he only locks himself inside them and gives ridiculously long sentences for them, culminating with 6 years.

Used in Johnny Bravo in the episode Cool Hand Johnny, where the female Warden throws Johnny into The Box, a small wooden shed in the corner of the prison yard after he hits on her. At first Johnny is non-plussed at the punishment until she throws CARL in there with him for 30 days, at which point Johnny breaks down and begs her for mercy. When she comes back to let them out 30 days later, they've somehow started up a party inside.

Dexter's Laboratory: On the short "Dexter Detention", it turns out that the detention room on Dexter's school has a tiny (as in, not even three-feet-tall-if-that-much Dexter fits inside without being shoved in) hole on the ground for "solitary confinement". Dexter almost ends up Gone Mad From The Isolation within ten seconds of being put inside—until an animal burrows in, inspiring Dexter to turn the hole into an escape route.

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